Even as they scream for “workers’ rights,” the one right that union bosses despise is the right to work. Big Labor and its overwhelmingly Democratic allies oppose a woman’s right to choose whether to join a union. Instead, they prefer that predominantly male employers and labor leaders make that choice for her.
The American Left has hoisted “choice” onto a pedestal taller than the Washington Monument. Liberals and their Big Labor buddies will race to their battle stations to defend a woman’s right to choose to abort her unborn child. Meanwhile, they holler themselves hoarse to prevent her (and her male counterparts) from freely choosing to accept or avoid union membership.
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Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) understands that exercising this choice is a basic human right, and neither private employment nor government work should require joining or paying dues to a union.
“Many Americans already are struggling just to put food on the table,” DeMint said, “and they shouldn’t have to fear losing their jobs or face discrimination if they don’t want to join a union.” Thus, on Tuesday, DeMint introduced S. 504, the National Right to Work Act (NRTWA). If not today, then soon, a federally protected individual right to work should be signed into law.
● Among America’s 22 right-to-work states (including Florida, Georgia, and Texas), non-farm private-sector employment grew 3.7 percent from 1999 to 2009, while it shrank 2.8 percent among America’s 28 forced-unionism states (e.g. California, Illinois, and New York).
● During those ten years, real personal income rose 28.3 percent in right-to-work states and sank 14.7 percent in forced-unionism states.
● In 2009, cost-of-living-adjusted, per-capita, disposable personal income was $35,543 in right-to-work states versus $33,389 in forced-unionism states. Americans in right-to-work states enjoyed more freedom — and a $2,154 premium.
Notwithstanding that right-to-work states are comparatively prosperous engines of job growth, the case for right-to-work laws is not merely economic, but moral.
“Government has granted union officials the unprecedented power to force individual employees to pay up or be fired and to coerce workers into subsidizing union speech,” says the National Right to Work Committee’s Patrick Semmens. “This fundamental violation of individual liberty — an infringement on freedom of speech and freedom of association — finally would end with passage of the NRTWA.”
“Compulsory unionism . . . should not be lawful under a free government or tolerated by a free people,” Donald R. Richberg argued in his book Compulsory Unionism: The New Slavery. As a labor attorney and federal official, Richberg helped draft landmark union laws, including the 1926 Railway Labor Act, the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, and the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Later in his career, however, Richberg considered such legislation authoritarian.
Richberg added: “A voluntary organization of workers united for self-help is inherently a much stronger organization than a union composed, to a considerable extent, of unwilling members.”
I don't remember why unions were formed way back when, but I do remember studying and learning why while in college.
Listening to all the laments of losing workers' rights, how these rights were fought for and people literally died to obtain them, ignores history. Yes those points are, in fact, true. However, unions were the worker's response to unsafe work environments, and employers who saw laborers as cheap, plentiful, disposable assets.
I wrote a fair number of papers on Unions (and Affirmative Action which runs a close parallel) morphing/channeling the oppressive nature of employers past.
The work environment has changed. Regulations, requirements, and reviews have been emplaced that have removed the necessity of "The Union", at least in respects to it's initial purpose. Now, as we are witnessing, it is no more than a self-sustaining lobby of elitism, with the ear of the Democrat Party.
The National Right to Work bill Senator DeMint proposes is good, but much better would be a flat-out repeal of the National Labor Relations Act, one of the most ruinous and authoritarian pieces of legislation Congress ever enacted. Oh yes -- unconstitutional as well. Had it not been for FDR's threat to pack the Supreme Court, the NLRA would have been struck down just as had similar New Deal invasions of business and commercial relationships. Among other provisions that no free society should accept, the NLRA states that if a union is certified by the government, it then becomes the exclusive representative of all the workers, even those who opposed it. No where else in American law are people forced to accept an agent against their will, but to help union bosses maintain "solidarity" the law prevents individual workers from saying "no thanks" to them.
While DeMint is at it, how about a bill to repeal another New Deal union goodie, the Davis-Bacon Act?
Working conditions aren't what they were when unions were formed to protect workers. Private sector unions are good to ensure that workers' rights will continue to be protected but FORCED unionization is tantamount to slavery. Why should I HAVE to pay someone out of my wages in order to have a job if I'm satisfied with the job I've taken.
And public sector unions are a different matter altogether. When the taxpayer is involved in the negotiations then maybe it makes sense. But as it is, its basically two parties bargaining for a third's party's money.
I'm waiting for a liberal to start talking about all the good things unions did for us 100 years ago with the unspoken assertion that this justifies keeping them around now. As if anything that lessens union power takes us closer to the return of the 16 hour work day and child labor. Hey, coal-fired steam engines fueled our industrial boom, so under the same rationale we should keep those around too.
Unions did do some things that were great at a time when they were necessary, such as in the coal mining industry way back when.
You needed a job, they were happy to hire you, pay you, rent you a house they owned, supply you goods from the store they owned, give you credit at the store, etc.
People literally ended up enslaving themselves unwittingly due to the way these business models were designed. It took unions to form and make changes. These situations existed once upon a time, but then unions became something much different once these situations no loner existed. They basically became the mob.
The biggest racket in America NEA National Education Association.
3.2 million members, virtually all cash goes to Democrats. Pay and benefits are huge by comparison to private sector, and membership has increased by 33% in the past decade while test results in every subject have declined accordingly. Classroom size is 1/3 from the high, when at the high test scores were also at their high.
Every single year you hear Democrats wanting to invest in education! Hire more members, it doesn't go to the classroom, as kids now even have to buy the toilet paper and hand wipes, scissors, crayons, kleenex, you name it. All of that investment gets the average teacher in public school a salary of $55k a year to work 1,600 hours or 1,000 less hours than your 9-5 5 days a week worker in the private sector. But that is misleading, they make more in benefits than they do in salary. Total compensation averages $123k a year.
Those are the public sector teachers, the 3.2 million killing us with the deficit. I agree do away with unions, and make education private while your at it, as that would eliminate our deficit overnight, and we could pay down the debt!
I was about to go to sleep, then it occurred to me that someone would challenge my statements. I decided to clarify before they had the chance to make a fool of themselves.
Yes 3.2 million at $123k equals $394 Billion dollars in pay, and not enough to get rid of our deficit. However an even greater expense is on the physical property, maintenance, vehicles, etc. that are involved in the entire process, not just the wages themselves.
I also note that this affects all levels of government, not just Federal. However, the current model is all paid with taxes (borrowed from China). If privatized, it would be revenue (Pay back China). There is the rub!
So go ahead, I know MikeB and ARegularGuy will stumble in here eventually and attempt to defy logic and reason with idiocy and ideology. I can and will bury them as usual.
I appreciate the Samuel Gompers quote. It goes along with my thinking about forced unionization. The unions are supposed to represent the average worker, but when membership is forced, some of that representation is artificial. Having grown up in a right to work state, but living as an adult in a forced unionized state, I can see that unions are artificially strong here. I desire the freedom to decide not to join the union that demands things that break the bank of the employer. I see value in more jobs and smaller benefits.
It seems to me that if my work conditions became unbearable, and if my employer started making ridiculous demands of me, or requiring me to work in an unsafe environment, there is nothing stopping me from making the choice to join the union if need be. But forced unionization suggests that I want things I don't necessarily want. I'd like the freedom to speak for myself by making the choice about union membership.
08 March 2011
Folks,
Mitch Daniels is, in my opinion, among all of the excellent, qualified-by-executive-experience, Republican candidates for US President in 2012, the best choice for US President. There are, however, several other very close, very excellent choices.
Generally, there are four sources of candidates for US President: (former and current) governors, senators, representatives, and others.
Below is my alphabetical list in each category. My favorite GOP ex-govs are starred.
Governors: Haley Barbour, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels*, Mike Huckabee*, Bobby Jindhal, Bob McConnell, Sarah Palin*, George Pataki, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney*, Rick Scott, Scott Walker.
Senators: Scott Brown, Sam Brownback, Jim DeMint, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, John Thune, Pat Toomey.
Representatives: Michele Bachman, Eric Cantor, Newt Gingrich, Darrell Issa, Ron Paul, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan.
Other (Honorable Mention): John Bolton (UN Ambassador), Glenn Beck (educator), Rick Santelli (Tea Party Inspiration & businessman).
The defense of the United States of America, the US Constitution, democracy, free markets, and our successful way of life is, by its nature, multi-directional. We need to keep the recently elected Republican young guns and recently re-elected Republican experienced hands in their current positions to fight the fight in the US House of Reps, the US Senate, and the various state governorships.
In the US Presidency, we need a Republican qualified-by-executive-experience to institute policies that follow the US Constitution, and support the free market system, exactly opposite the policies followed by Barak Hussein Obama, a Marxist, who will not even call a terrorist a terrorist.
We need an ex-governor, qualified-by-executive-experience, with a proven history, to balance our budgets, let the economy grow (free of Marxist government central planning), and return America to freedom. Mitch Daniels has done just that in Indiana.
Mitch Daniels is an excellent choice for the next President of the United States.
Tom Johnson
Largo, Florida, USA
PS 13 March 2011
From the St. Petersburg Socialist Times
(The outgoing, Republican governor of Indiana) Mitch Daniels has privatized a state highway, cut the state work force to historic lows, and eliminated bargaining rights for state employee unions. What the SPST (genetically) fails to mention is that (from Wikipedia) Daniels has balanced the budget. He capped property taxes to protect homeowners & raised sales taxes to offset tax revenue loss. The move proved so popular that Daniels was re-elected.
Reality Check,
I am neither MikeB nor ARegularGuy but your logic and thinking is awful. The Federal budget for education is less than 3% of the total and that includes Pell grants and other aid. Actual money spent for K-12 is less than 1%. Heck, elimate the entire Department of Education, a boffo idea IMHO, and it is hardly a rounding error on the debt.
Are you advocating complete private funding for K-12 education? Because if you are not then even eliminating every public school would hardly eliminate the cost to tax payers. Yeah, private schools tend to be less expensive but simple economics dictates if the demand for seats in private schools skyrocket so will costs. Fixed costs as private schools seek to increase the number of classroom seats they need to provide and wages costs as they must hire more and more teachers -most likely at higher wages than they pay now- to teach those students they have contracted to teach.
